An Information Junkie’s Guide to Shutting Out the World Cup

U.S. player Clint Dempsey complains after he is tripped during a friendly match against Turkey earlier this month.

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The World Cup is upon us again. Please, make it stop.

For millions upon millions of us — billions? — this is a time for great celebration, to don our nations’ colors, to dust off that vuvuzela, to concoct a new chant that may or may not be based on a White Stripes song. A whole month (A whole month? Oy …) of glory and madness awaits! We even have a special online section set up for you here at The Wall Street Journal, courtesy of our sports team. But for a relative few of us, particularly “Ugly Americans” such as myself, it’s time to grin and bear it.

Now, we don’t begrudge the world its fun and triumph because, lord knows, we Americans know a thing or two about producing over-indulgent pomp, circumstance and spectacle. (The Super Bowl, anyone? Blockbuster director Michael Bay’s career?) And if you want to get worked up about a sport whose 90-minute matches feature more flops than Ryan Reynolds’ filmography, that’s your prerogative. But it’s just that so many American soccer fans, particularly the most vocal ones, come off as a bit, er, phony. As WSJ reporter Jonathan Clegg, who also covers the National Football League, wrote recently:

Never mind that no other sport is so linked to the working class. For these fans, rooting for an English soccer team is a highbrow pursuit and a mark of sophistication, like going to a Wes Anderson movie or owning a New Yorker subscription.

The most gifted and patient among us can simply pay all of this no mind. But some of us, like yours truly, are hooked on information. We can’t let go of our Twitter feeds or our constant news updates. Yet, the World Cup is already starting to invade our personal cyberspace and our overactive minds, social media filters be damned. Say goodbye to the soccer-free space that was once your Facebook wall.

Fret not, though, friends. Speakeasy is here to help. Here are five fun ways to keep your minds occupied and safe from that World Cup racket for the next month:

Read Thomas Pynchon. Trust me, if you want to use up all the “bandwidth” in your mind with a steady, confounding, exhilarating flow of information, there’s always Pynchon. Give “Gravity’s Rainbow” a shot. It might take you a couple times to make it through the World War II-set phantasmagoria of paranoia, arcane symbolism, scatological humor, bananas, puns awful and sublime, rocketry, and sex, but it’s worth it. And fun! You might as well pick up Steven C. Weisenberger’s “A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion, too. It’s a page-by-page breakdown of all the references in the National Book Award-winning novel. It might drag it out a bit, but you do have a whole month. If you don’t have the patience for it, though, there’s “Inherent Vice,” the closest thing to a “beach read” Pynchon has written. It’s sort of like “The Big Lebowski” by way of Raymond Chandler and Mad Magazine, and it’s being adapted by “There Will Be Blood” director Paul Thomas Anderson into a feature film starring Joaquin Phoenix. The movie is due for release this winter, so brush up!

Kristen Bell in the ‘Veronica Mars’ movie.

Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection

Watch “Veronica Mars.” Speaking of rich and involving detective stories set in Southern California, isn’t it time you finally caught up with Kristen Bell’s teenage sleuth? It’s not as dense as Pynchon or some of the other great dramas that have come to define this so-called Golden Age of Television, at least not on the surface, but it’ll hook you with some surprisingly sophisticated and hard-boiled themes and plotting. “Nancy Drew” this ain’t. Plus, there’s a movie that takes place years after the show’s run ended. Remember the hype about its Kickstarter page that got fans to donate millions of bucks to make it happen? Well, it happened, and it was pretty much made for the fans. After watching the three seasons of “Veronica Mars,” you’ll be a fan, too.

Watch “Twin Peaks.” All right, so three seasons and a movie of “Veronica Mars” probably won’t be enough to keep you fully engaged for the whole month, so why not give another short-lived mystery series a shot? David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” only ran two seasons, and also had a tie-in movie (“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”), but it broke ground in the way it carried its main narrative objective — solving the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer in the titular small northwestern U.S. town — from episode to episode. Lynch, a master of aesthetically pleasing weirdness, also brought a cinematic flair to TV that would help set the standard for what would become the medium’s latest Golden Age. Fans of information-packed TV oddities such as “Lost,”“True Detective” and “Hannibal” will find plenty to dig into here, as well. (As a matter of fact, you should use this World Cup month to get into the criminally underwatched “Hannibal,” too!)

Read “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Many of you have probably read all or at least some of George R.R. Martin’s still-incomplete series of novels, which provides the source material for HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” If you haven’t, here’s your best chance to dig deep into the five books (there could be as many as three more on the way!), each of which are hundreds of pages long, with even more characters, incident and nuance than you’ve seen in the TV series. You’ll be distracted from any World Cup noise by simply trying to remember who’s related to whom in Martin’s fantastical labyrinth of politics, violence, sex and dragons. If you have read them, why not read them again, especially if you’re also watching the show? It’ll help you keep better tabs on what’s going on in both versions of Westeros and beyond.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in ‘Cosmos.’

20th Century Fox/Everett Collection

Watch “Cosmos.” This is a piece of advice I need to heed myself. I’ve seen neither Carl Sagan’s nor Neil deGrasse Tyson’s versions of the “spacetime odyssey,” which are intended to teach us — with sumptuous visuals and engaging, relatable narration — about the most information-rich thing there is, the universe. (Check out Speakeasy’s recent Q&A with Tyson, if you get a chance.)

It’s so easy to make big problems out of little things, so hopefully “Cosmos” will serve as a reminder that it’s not worth getting that worked up over a silly soccer tournament … or that an interminable month of soccer fanatics’ blathering is not even a blip on the face of eternity. What better way to occupy your mind by pondering the vastness of existence itself?

Soccer haters, tell us how you’re going to weather the World Cup storm in the comments, or write to @Michael_Calia on Twitter or at michael.calia@wsj.com. Soccer lovers should also feel free to give Michael a piece of their mind.